Space Rodeo! NASA to Lasso Asteroid and Drag it to Earth Orbit.

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — Surrounded by engineers, NASA chief Charles Bolden inspected a prototype spacecraft engine that could power an audacious mission to lasso an asteroid and tow it closer to Earth for astronauts to explore.

Bolden checked on the progress Thursday a month after the Obama administration unveiled its 2014 budget that proposes $105 million to jump start the mission, which may eventually cost more than $2.6 billion.

Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and Glenn Research Center in Ohio are developing a thruster that relies on ion propulsion instead of conventional chemical fuel.

Once relegated to science fiction, ion propulsion — which fires beams of electrically charged atoms to propel a spacecraft — is preferred for deep space cruising because it's more fuel-efficient. Engine testing is expected to ramp up next year.

During his visit to the JPL campus, nestled in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains northeast of Los Angeles, Bolden viewed an engineering model of the engine and peered through a porthole of a vacuum chamber housing the prototype.

NASA is under White House orders to fly humans to an asteroid as a stepping stone to Mars. Instead of sending astronauts to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, as originally planned, the space agency came up with a quicker, cheaper idea: Haul the asteroid close to the moon and visit it there.

Bolden said the original concept was impractical given the flat budget and praised the alternative as "ingenious."

"If you can't get to the asteroid, bring the asteroid to you," Bolden said.

Cancer: Teen Who Wrote Internet Viral Goodbye Hit 'Clouds' Dies

LAKELAND, Minn. (AP) — When high school student Zach Sobiech learned he didn't have much longer to live, his mother suggested he write letters to tell his loved ones goodbye. Instead, the Minnesota teenager turned to writing music — and his farewell song, "Clouds," became a YouTube sensation that has attracted more than 4 million views.

Other musicians have covered the tune, and it inspired a celebrity video on YouTube. "Clouds" was even listed No. 1 on the iTunes Top 10 list on Wednesday — two days after Sobiech died after battling bone cancer.

His mother, Laura Sobiech, said on the CaringBridge website that her son was surrounded by family and his girlfriend when he died at his home in Lakeland, an eastern suburb of St. Paul. He had recently turned 18.

Sobiech was being remembered not only for his music, but also for the way he lived. John Hallberg, the chief executive of the Children's Cancer Research Fund, said Wednesday that Sobiech had a positive attitude and approached his diagnosis with strength and grace.

"You don't have to find out you're dying to start living," Sobiech said in a short video about him titled, "My Last Days: Meet Zach Sobiech," which also has been viewed more than 4 million times since it was posted to YouTube two weeks ago.

Hack Proof Internet: Hackers' Days are Numbered Because of Quantum Physics!

A Hack-Proof Internet Exists, Thanks to Quantum Physics

Leave it to the quantum physicists at Los Alamos National Labs to have run for the past two years something that sounded like science fiction: a quantum Internet that promises perfectly secure online communications.

While hackers have gotten much better in the past decade at intercepting alphanumeric keys used to transmit most electronic message or unlocking passwords with brute-force attacks, the Los Alamos system uses cryptography based on the intrinsic randomness of quantum physics. Its digital keys, generated by a truly random set of numbers, theoretically leave hackers with no way to figure out the key’s internal coding.

Click on above virus' for more on Quantum Internet 

A second layer of security lies in the passage of the key to its recipient. The key is effectively transported by photons of light along a dedicated fiber optic line. Per Heisenberg’s famous uncertainty principle, hack attempts would have clear effects on those particles. As MIT Technology Review puts it, “any attempt to eavesdrop on a quantum message cannot fail to leave telltale signs of snooping that the receiver can detect.”

So while the rest of us are still prey to the spying eyes of the Chinese army, larcenous Eastern European fraudsters, or the FBI, a select research team in New Mexico can engage in snoop-proof online communication—a massive breakthrough for the security of our personal data, as well as for nationwide endeavors such as online banking and voting.